# couchant
## English
### Etymology

From Middle English couchant, from Middle French couchant.

### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /ˈkaʊtʃənt/

### Adjective

couchant (not comparable)
* (of an animal) Lying with belly down and front legs extended; crouching.
** 1801, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], →OCLC:The dogs, with eager yelp, / Are struggling to be free; / The hawks in frequent stoop / Token their haste for flight; / And couchant on the saddle-bow, / With tranquil eyes, and talons sheath’d, / The ounce expects his liberty.
** 1865, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “The Shipwreck”, in [Sophia Thoreau; William Ellery Channing], editors, Cape Cod, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 14:There were the tawny rocks, like lions couchant, defying the ocean, whose waves incessantly dashed against and scoured them with vast quantities of gravel.
** 1880, James Thomson, chapter XX, in The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems, London: Reeves and Turner, […], →OCLC:Two figures faced each other, large, austere; / A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast, / An angel standing in the moonlight clear; […]
** 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance?
* (heraldry) Represented as crouching with the head raised.
** 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:His crest was covered with a couchant Hownd, / And all his armour seem'd of antique mould […]

#### Derived terms

* couchant and levant
* counter-couchant
* levant and couchant

#### Translations
## French
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ku.ʃɑ̃/

### Noun

couchant m (plural couchants)
* the setting sun
* the sunset
* the west
* (literary) old age, decline, termination

### Participle

couchant
* present participle of coucher

### Further reading

* “couchant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

## Middle English
### Alternative forms

* cowchaunte

### Etymology

From Middle French couchant, from Old French couchant.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈkuːtʃant/

### Noun

couchant
* (rare) Lying down; couchant.
* (rare) Displaying deference and humility.

#### Descendants

* English: couchant

#### References

* “cǒuchant, ppl.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-20.

## Middle French
### Verb

couchant (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)
* present participle of coucher
* (may be preceded by en, invariable) gerund of coucher

### Adjective

couchant m (feminine singular couchante, masculine plural couchans, feminine plural couchantes)
* lying down

## Old French
### Verb

couchant
* present participle of couchier

### Adjective

couchant m (oblique and nominative feminine singular couchant)
* lying down